I don't where you can find the annual budget. Before the Mortier's arrival, you can find it on the official website of POB, but now you find it nowhere. This season is more interesting that the actual season, more clasical and neo-classical. But I'm not thrilled by it. I'm glad to discover Neumeier's Lady of Camelias but it's the end of the season.

David, I too had a search on Google and also a look at the French Ministry of Culture website, but couldn't find anything.

I'm assuming you are interested in orders of magnitude, rather than exactitude. From the dim and distant past, I have a memory that the full Paris Opera grant was greater than the annual US National Endowment for the Arts budget, suggesting around $150m.

For comparison, the Royal Opera House now receives around $50m per annum, which is around 30% of total income. Given that:

- the Paris Opera has two major venues, as opposed to one in London

- POB has many more dancers (is it around 140, Cathy?) than the Royal's 92

- I would imagine the Paris Opera subsidy %age is around double or more that of the Royal, especially looking at ticket price comparisons.

Where does that leave us?

RO - $50m

scale up by factors of 2 for %age subsidy, 1.5 greater cost base due to staff and building, gives:

$50x2x1.5 = $150m

So both guesstimates for the entire Paris Opera subsidy comes out at $150m (I didn' fix it, honest!!)

What about Paris Opera Ballet alone? Well, the Royal Opera grant is no longer split between opera and ballet, but when it was, around 45% of the total was for ballet. If POB is similar, then that gives a subsidy of the order of $67.5m.

Given all the guesses here, there is clearly an error bound. I would be inclined to say that the Paris Opera Ballet grant was probably within the range $50m-$80m per annum.

Given the quality of the dancers and the mix of 19th, 20th classics and innovative work, it's money well spent in my book.

It has just been reported on a Russian web site dedicated to the Benois de la Danse awards, (and perhaps those in Paris were already aware) that Manuel Legris has undergone knee surgery and (if I correctly understood) had his meniscus removed. Apparently during rehearsal on April 15 the pain was so bad that he stopped, and went to the hospital. It is said he feels fine at present time. Legris was slated to perform at the Benois Laureates performance in Moscow on April 27 and will not be attending.

I dont know the budget of the PO, but I know the financial help from french governement is 106 millions euros (for 2005). There is also ticket sales, friends... But what is thepart of the ballet in this?? (excuse my english, it's quite far...)

Thank you very much for this information. I knew about Legris's performances that I intend to see in July.
Very sad about Hilaire's retirement, but, on the other hand, happy to see that he will be staying in the company as ballet master.

Getting to Know the (Insane) Man Who Was Emperorby ALAN RIDING for the New York Times

Now Ms. Lefèvre has taken a still greater gamble by recruiting Nicolas Le Riche, 33, one of the company's star dancers but a novice choreographer, to create a five-act ballet with no fewer than 23 dancers around the story of the crazed Roman emperor Caligula.

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